Lucasfilm has released a very brief teaser for Disney animated series Star Wars Rebels, which we’ll hear more about during New York Comic-Con this weekend. So far we know the series is canon and will bridge the two decades between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope. It brings back some of the talent behind Star Wars: The Clone Wars and also shows the influence of Ralph McQuarrie’s original Star Wars concept art.

We don’t know for certain who the voice cast will be, but there have been rumors.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, contracts are in the works for David Oyelowo, Freddie Prinze Jr., Vanessa Marshall, Taylor Gray and Steven Jay Blum. […] The basic premise of the show, as I understand it, revolves around a bunch of young folk who take to a ship called The Ghost and go on the run when their home planet becomes a base for the Imperial Empire, suddenly surrounding them with austere adult authority figures. [Bleeding Cool]

The closest thing we have to a synopsis is this sentence from the official Star Wars website. “[Star Wars Rebels] takes place in a time where the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire is taking shape.”

Star Wars Rebels will premiere as a one-hour special on Disney next fall, then continue as a series on Disney XD channels. A family-friendly Star Wars special airing late in the year? Let’s hope it’s better than the Holiday Special.

Could they pick a more boring period of the Star Wars universe? Where the only two Jedi are living in seclusion, can’t communicate with each other, and are both in barren wastelands?
What’s the point of any Star Wars story-line without any Jedi? Oh the empire took over another dozen planets but lost one to the rebels, thrilling!

The Jedi are still entertaining to you? I’d much rather spend some time in the original trilogy’s “secular” era, as it were, after the last decade and its extreme saturation of Jedi, Sith, Old Republic this, and Clone Wars that.

There are other great stories out there that don’t involve Jedi, sure, but I don’t think they’re between 3 and 4. How about the 3 year period between 4 and 5; after the destruction of the first DS? There might also be some great stories during the era of 5.

Hey, that 3-year period could wind up being part of the series, depending on how long it runs. And I’d love a return to Shadows… hell, maybe that’ll be one of the “stand-alone” movies that Disney’s planning.

In the originals, even though Ben does some teaching, he never comes across as “The Guy” who was always going to train Luke, and he is NEVER referred to as a Jedi Master. We get a mention of Vader being his pupil, but Obi-Wan calls himself a Jedi Knight.

I dunno, it’s the impression I got back in the day when all we had to go by was the movies and our imagination, not 1000 different “canon” sources.

They couldn’t pick a better one, at least if they had the balls to make it PG-13 rated and maybe make it an anthology series. There’s all the time and space in the galaxy to tell or at least rip-off all kinds of fun stories. Think “Bah Bah Blacksheep” but with Z-95s and TIE fighters, or Dirty Dozen or Devil’s Brigade but with blasters and stormtroopers. Vader hunting down and killing Jedi. Pretty much everything thing in years worth of story lines in the Dark Times, Empire and Rebellion comics series. There are SO Many awesome ways they could go with an animated series but won’t.